How not to get your COVID booster

[dreamshark]

Richard wanted to get his bivalent booster as soon as possible and we found it impossible to get it from his usual Walgreens. They had the vaccine but wouldn't give it to him unless he made an appointment in advance over the phone or online (forget walk-ins, they wouldn't even schedule an appointment in person). The pharmacy doesn't answer their phone and this location did not show up in the online scheduler. So I tried CVS online. Again, nothing at any nearby location, but the CVS pharmacy inside the Target on 66th and Cedar had availability the next day. I managed to schedule the appointment, although it was a PITA (they demanded every possible number from his insurance card PLUS his Medicare number, which their website repeatedly refused to accept). I finally just ignored the bogus error messages and continued on and the appointment was made. I reluctantly gave them my cell phone number because otherwise the whole process would have had to be aborted. 

Richard then spent 90 minutes in the Target store the next day, which apparently had no signs directing people on where to go for vaccinations. He waited in line at the mini-clinic for a long time only to find that he had to go to the pharmacy instead. Then again had to wait in a long line of people filling prescriptions, so was late for his scheduled appointment. But they did vaccinate him. 

I knew I should never have given CVS my phone number. One reason I switched to the Cub Pharmacy for my own prescriptions was to get away from their inane "courtesy calls." Sure enough, they called for Richard this morning, refusing to leave a message or give a reason for the call. On the off chance that they were calling to say they had given him the wrong vaccine or something, we fought through the phone tree and hold queue to get back to them. Yup, it was a marketing call. They wondered if Richard might like another random vaccine that he does not in fact need (pneumonia). 

Comments

[quadong]

I wonder if your CVS and mine are actually two different companies. I don't mean this entirely facetiously. Maybe they're broken into regions and operate independently. CVS has my phone number, but they never use it for marketing calls, only to tell me my prescription is up for refilling. For sure I was hesitant to give them my number, but it seems to have been ok. I don't *think* I had to go through a stage of getting annoying calls and then telling them to stop that.

[dreamshark]

Besides the annoyance of the unnecessary and intrusive phone call, I am appalled at the idea of a pharmacy pressuring one-time customers that they know nothing about to schedule vaccines that they may not need. I don't know if that is actually illegal, but it certainly seems unethical.

Maybe there are different regions with different policies, who knows? In any case, I no longer want anything to do with this one. God, I miss the era of independent pharmacies.